What bothered me most about this chapter was the authors’ description of the differences between the strategies of the Human Rights Campaign and Queers. They start by saying that the “HRC and Queers strategies couldn’t be more different” (155). Considering that both seem to approach the situation with the same ideas about the nature of sex, gender, and sexuality, buying into the binary of sexuality, they could easily be “more different” if Queers followed their name and reasoned with ideas from queer theory instead. Meem, Gibson, and Alexander are clearly at least somewhat familiar with the difference between gay liberation’s and queer theory’s approaches to various issues, as evidenced right after their description of the HRC’s and Queers’ strategies. They say that it is “important to look beyond the civil rights paradigm and critique institutional systems, asking who is served by them and who is excluded” (155), but they fail to explain that sexuality as a polarized binary is an institutional system. Despite dedicating the previous chapter entirely to the expansion of ideas about sexuality beyond the hetero-homo binary, they continue to treat sexuality as a definite and descriptive identity, ignoring the queering of sexuality and identity that many have pushed for before them. I hope this is just a way to keep the information simple enough for those new to the history and theory to understand. I realize that this textbook serves as an Introduction to LGBT Studies, but I don’t see how the authors can raise the distinctions between gay liberation and queer theory and then largely ignore the ideas behind queer theory.
It also seems odd that they would refer to someone whom they recognize as “[identifying] as gay, transgender, and ‘two-spirited’” as “he” from Martinez’ sex rather than gender identification. They make a big deal out of the school’s and the students’ refusal to recognize Martinez as a girl, but then they do the same themselves! They obviously treat trans-identification with more respect than the people in the case of Martinez’ murder, describing such cases in ways that sound empathetic with recognition of unfair victimization, but their use of what seems to be incorrectly gendered pronouns makes me doubt their experience with or acceptance of trans-identifying individuals.
They do make a good point with their analysis of the situation:
Social systems that impose standards of gender conformity. . . create a circumstance in which gender nonconformists are seen as deserving harassment and in which peers consider it their right (and perhaps subconsciously their responsibility) to police one another’s gender behaviors. Social restrictions on behavior related to gender and sexuality, as well as a perception that LGBT people are predatory outsiders, contribute to exclusionary attitudes based on a sense of the inherent inferiority of LGBT people as compared with gender conformists and heterosexuals. . . (158)
In this way, “gender/sexuality policing” takes on new meaning, where peers position themselves as agents who enforce the laws of the heterosexual matrix through punishment. Meem, Gibson, and Alexander never use the word, but these extreme reactions to gender nonconformity are very much based in homophobia and transphobia--although they do come near saying this when they explain that these reactions come from “a social structure that assumes that sexual and gender difference are threatening” (158).
Lastly, I find it pleasing that, despite the idea that people still have that “An avowed homosexual wouldn’t be a role model for [traditional family] values” (159), Ellen can be supported as a spokesperson for JCPenny and prove this wrong.
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